Visit to Thackray Medical Museum

Yesterday I arranged to meet up with librarian Alan Humphries at the Thackray medical museum in Leeds to talk about the history of medicine and health promotion in visual form. 

I made notes as he spoke and took photographs of some of the documents in archival form.

Introduction

• Prince Albert started a 'trend' of having a medical chest in their homes in which people were able to self-medicate if they were feeling unwell, if they could afford it
• Many adverts for medicines tended to be in newspapers
• Going to see a physician cost a lot of money
• Chemists provided patent and preparatory medicines
• Mrs Stephens-bladder stone medicines
• Antibiotics came in around 1950

Beechams Pills

• Popular advert
• Ethical company, popular between 1840-1960
• Ingredients: aloes, ginger and soap (laxatives)
• Used as holiday postcards from Blackpool, had a 'Beechams fixes everything' approach
• Even produced sheet music to get the family around the piano!

Thomas Holloway

• Exploited advertising
• Widespread and unethical, very canny
• Royal Holloway University is named after him
• Used to jump onto important events e.g. the beautiful poster of the 1897 jubilee of Queen Victoria in association with Holloway; anything to remember the name of the company 
• Sold products targeting children:

1. Holloway's national drawing book
2. Holloway's penny atlas
3. Happy days of childhood

They all had an educational value.

Mellins Food

For infants and invalids. Whole building used to advertise the company at Ludgate Circus, London.

Humphrey's Homeopathy

• American company (1900's)
• Card for the product and a free sample
• Similar to the company Bristol Myers (worldwide)
• Ethical values
• Chemically made synthetic vs natural and small doses, to be safer

Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup

• "The mothers friend", targeted at mothers/nannies
• Sooth teething children
• (1870)
• Contained OPIUM, which is highly addictive
• Many infants died of accidental opium overdoses
• Mother Seagull was the more American version of Mrs Winslow

Odol Toothpaste

• 'Pretty Picture' to sell (1920's)

Daisy LTD LEEDS

• Similar to odol in the fact that it used pretty pictures to appeal to its audience
• Painkiller
• 'Daisies famous headache cure'

PACKAGING/PROMOTION

• 'Allenburys Feeder'-beautiful packing that stuck adverts for other products on the side of the box
• The British Oxygen Company (1895) advert
• DCL vitamin B1 tablets (1950) pick up girl
• Dr Golding Bird's rheumatic and neuralgic mixture for face pain, focus on typography
• JAK TAR disinfectant, Holbeck (1950)
• The children's cough linctus
• Owbridge- propelling pen (freebies to target/exploit the public)
• Vibrona- the ideal tonic wine
• FREEBIES!!!
• Beechams- Name of the company included in the red tax stamp

SEMANTICS/SEMIOTICS

• Use of language to create trust e.g. labelling wine as a 'tonic' and professionalising a statement, 'the doctors whiskey'
• Stock images were bought, repurposed and overprinted to sell
• Things that were used all of the time were inscribed with the companies name e.g. lip balm
• Desirable images
• Targeting certain age groups e.g. 'Oxbridge's sewing guide for children', clearly targeting kids!
• Sentiment, e.g. 'Parker's ginger tonic', picture of a girl and a dog
• Phrases such as "worth a guinea"
• Common imaging-beautiful paintings of children
• Alteration, e.g. 'pink pills for pale people'

Publications For Health Advice

• THE GRAPHIC (magazine)
• Teddy Ashton's annual
• Edwin W Alabone
• T.R. Allinson
• British Medical Association
• Almanack-magazines on how to self-medicate
• Good advice book (1849)
• William Milner: Halifax publisher- produced 'handy guides'
• Domestic medicine for the family physician (1765)
• The motherhood book (newspaper) the amalgamated press
• The universal home doctor illustrated, oldham's press, long acre, London WC2-a lot of diagrammatic drawings illustrating the text

Summary

• Use of desirable images (idealisation) urged consumers to buy the product
• Language focused on trust/coming from a professional's perspective
• Branding non-associative products with the company name, often targeting children
• Giving out freebies (always a winner)

I learnt so much in the few hours that I spent at the Thackray, which helped me establish a link between techniques used in historical advertising, and modern advertising. Continuing to compare how techniques such as brand association have been used over the decades might help me establish a medium to think about how this can be used to persuade consumers to alter their behaviour in terms of practicing good health. I have so much to think about!